


Honeymooners

by neveralarch



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-20
Updated: 2011-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The Master and the Rani had made it as far as the Monan Host's homeworld cluster before they broke up.</i> Spanning the gap between The War Games and Terror of the Autons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honeymooners

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a prompt on the best_enemies anonmeme. A prequel to [The Amazon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/196625), taking off from the quote in the summary. Beta thanks to the inestimable and incomparable birdsarecalling and roachpatrol!

Koschei's hands after his regeneration were long and slim and dark. He rather liked them, even marred as they were by the heavy metal cuffs around his wrists.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked the guard.

"Yes. Now shut up and wait for your work detail supervisor."

Koschei nodded amiably and sat down on the floor of the corridor, folding his knees up to his chin. The guard glared at him, but didn't move. Koschei blew out a deep breath and leaned back, still getting used to this gangly new body and his rather reduced new situation. He rubbed at his chin and was mildly disappointed to find it clean-shaven.

It wasn't as if he'd really expected the Doctor to rescue him from the Time Lords. No. That would have been too much to hope for, even - or especially - from the Doctor. But Koschei did feel as if he should be angry about the Doctor abandoning him, and he wasn't. This new self was a little mellower than he was used to, honestly. It could just be the lingering effect of a difficult and delayed regeneration, but it was odd all the same.

Footsteps sounded down the corridor and the guard stood a little straighter. Koschei thought about getting up, but it seemed like too much trouble. He played with the hem of the worn black robe he'd been given as a uniform instead.

"Right, I'm here, what?" The voice was familiar. Koschei looked up at a dark-haired woman in a uniform of her own.

"New assistant for you," said the guard. "Sign here."

"They can't have found someone- oh, it's you," said Ushas, looking down at Koschei. Her mouth twisted with an emotion that he couldn't identify. "Fine." She took a datapad from the guard and scribbled on it.

"Me," agreed Koschei, a beat too late. "I hadn't realized that they had got you as well."

"A trumped-up charge about importing exotic birds seems to be enough to put you in CIA custody these days," said Ushas. Her lips quirked again, this time in obvious amusement. Koschei felt a brief, familiar unease at the idea of being laughed at before that feeling was subsumed by the pool of calm in his stomach.

"Giant _face-eating_ birds," muttered the guard.

"I don't recall asking your opinion," said Ushas. "Run along now, and let me start breaking him in."

The guard did so, with another mutter that sounded suspiciously like 'better him than me.' Koschei looked after him, belatedly recalling his cuffs.

"Wasn't he supposed to take these off?" Koschei asked.

"Here." Ushas produced a key from a pocket of her uniform and bent down to unlock the cuffs. "This was sent to me earlier this morning. I think they were worried you'd suborn the guard and so on." The cuffs came away and Ushas tucked them into her pocket along with the key, making an ugly bulge at her hip. "Get up, let's go."

Koschei pushed himself up slowly, ending up about a head over Ushas. Last time they'd met, she'd been taller. Was she still in the same body? She looked different, but it had been a while.

Ushas was already striding down the corridor, not looking back to see if Koschei was following. He did, in the absence of anything better to do.

"We all heard about the little affair with the War Lord, of course," said Ushas. "The Doctor got himself brought in over that as well, didn't he?"

"I don't know," said Koschei. "I was in regeneration sickness until about an hour ago. Then all I got was the 'secret prison think-tank' debriefing."

"Well, apparently the Doctor's got himself drafted for CIA service as well. Not here, thank Rassilon. I don't think I could handle both of you."

"Why am _I_ here?" asked Koschei, his brain finally starting to tick over into curiosity. "You haven’t changed fields of study in my time away, I’m sure, and I'm hardly a biologist or a chemist."

"I've been putting in requests for a practical engineer and a general assistant since my third day here. It looks like they decided you could serve for both." They'd reached a door, and Ushas waved her hand at it, stepping in as the door pulled into a recess. "Now, Koschei-"

"Don't call me that," said Koschei. He rubbed at his wrists, feeling the raw spots where the cuffs had chafed.

"Oh, this is- fine." Ushas stopped walking and rolled her eyes, just to show him how absurd he was being. "I'm going to have to introduce you as something. What would you like to be called?"

"I-" He wasn't the War Chief anymore. And there was definitely something, but he couldn't think what, and this regeneration was really indecisive as well, wasn't it? Koschei grimaced and rubbed at his wrists some more. He thought he might have imprinted on the cuffs, having them on so soon after his regeneration. That could be a little inconvenient.

"I'll just say you're my new assistant for now, shall I?" said Ushas, already out of patience. She still had that tendency to rush, though Koschei felt sure that he’d been able to keep up with her before.

Koschei nodded vaguely, still thinking. Ushas glared at him and dragged him by the arm through the entry room and into a laboratory off to the side.

"Lideen! Lideen, they finally sent me an assistant."

The laboratory was obviously that of another chemist, this one an older-looking Time Lady with a pale coloring and wide brown eyes. Or perhaps they were only wide now, as she frowned at Ushas' bursting in.

"I'm in the midst of a delicate experiment," she said, shortly. Her hands shook slightly as they steadied a rounded flask that had nearly tipped out of its stand at Ushas' arrival. "And don't you mean they sent _us_ an assistant?"

"If you like," said Ushas. "We'll just leave you to it, shall we?"

Koschei managed to get away with just following this time.

"Is that Lideen as in Lideenastrobia? The professor that got kicked out of the academy in our fifteenth year?"

"The same," said Ushas. "For poisoning Borusa, as it turns out. I only wish it had been fatal, and apparently so does Lideen. Not accidental, from what she tells me. Here's my lab."

It was as neat and spare as Ushas' workspaces had always been. Koschei shrugged, unsure of what he was supposed to say.

"There are cots laid out in the rooms on the other side of the entry room," continued Ushas. She went and picked up a machine from under one of her tables, laying out a set of spare parts. "Not much in the way of comforts, I'm afraid."

"I expected as much," said Koschei, shrugging again. "What's that you've got there?"

"Ah, now, this is why I wanted a technician," said Ushas. "This is our way out. I’ve been ordering pieces for a solvent phase accelerator, and-"

Koschei drifted closer, ignoring Ushas’ explanation of her no doubt ingenious machinations. The machine was obviously an early stage of something dimensionally transcendental, whatever she said. Without thinking Koschei picked up a screwdriver and started poking around.

"Careful," warned Ushas. "The compounds inside aren't very stable-"

"Because the housing isn't joined together properly," said Koschei. "What is this? It looks like a homing beacon, but it _feels_ almost like a TARDIS."

"It's more or less both," said Ushas. "It should let us do a jump to the nearest unoccupied TARDIS and take it off-world. Since the closest ones are unmarked CIA TARDISes, we shouldn't have any trouble getting clearance, you see?"

"The relays aren't even in sync is what I see," said Koschei.

"I've already admitted that I need your help," said Ushas. "You needn't be so difficult."

"Is Lideen in on this?" asked Koschei. It actually was a very clever design, despite its technical problems.

"No, she's not trustworthy."

"And I am?" Koschei took the casing off entirely, exposing the tangle of wires within.

"I trust you to want to get out," said Ushas. She smiled, thinly. "I got lucky that you were assigned - I know more about your motivations than I do about some random criminal. You'll go along with my plans for now, won't you."

"Yes," admitted Koschei. It would be far easier to take advantage of Ushas’ plan than it would be to make up his own from whole cloth.

"Good. Let's put that away for now, then. We'll work on it while Lideen is asleep, and do our assigned projects until then."

Koschei nodded, and the machine disappeared under the table again.

\---

After working for the War Lord for so long, Koschei had gotten used to performing tedious tasks for superiors he didn't like or respect. As such, his work in the laboratory was achingly familiar.

Ushas did, in fact, need him to help her with the CIA projects. Koschei adapted to the work quickly, helped by the fact that it was hardly challenging.

"Pass me that test tube, Assistant," said Ushas.

"Don't call me that," grumbled Koschei, passing her the test tube. He watched as Ushas swirled the chemicals together and rubbed idly at the brass bracelets he had found to replace his cuffs.

"Have you decided on a name?" The container began to bubble and fizz, and Ushas slipped her goggles from her hair to cover her eyes. Koschei just took a few steps back, half-sheltering behind another table.

"I'm thinking," he said.

Ushas made a face at him and added something else to her concoction.

She told him what it was for, but Koschei let the words pass over him. All of their chemical work would be handed over to their CIA masters soon enough, and he couldn't bring himself to care about its purpose.

Which was wrong, somehow. Surely he should at least be interested.

"Do you feel different, here?" he asked. "Like things are, I don’t know, muffled. Unimportant."

"No," said Ushas, shortly. She started to decant the mixture into a set of smaller flasks. "Now, this is meant to be ingested by a suspected enemy agent and then, if they attempt to divulge any information, it should eliminate them. We’re having problems with the timing-"

Koschei leant against one of the wire racks of chemical supplies and tried to appear interested.

Working with Ushas left him bored and confused, but working with Lideen was excruciating in a different way.

"Give me the cycled salinic cerul solution." Lideen reached out a hand without looking at Koschei.

"Ah-" Koschei looked around at the various unlabeled containers strewn around Lideen's cluttered lab.

"It's blue," sighed Lideen.

That narrowed it down to about thirty. Koschei picked one at random.

"No," said Lideen, without even looking at him. "Try again."

This would go on for about an hour at a time. Lideen had apparently limitless patience, and though Koschei had a good memory for names, she never actually told him what anything was until he finally found the right chemical.

The best times - the only bearable times - were at night, when Koschei was able to work at something at which he was actually good. With the machine, he was in charge, and could send Ushas on hunts for tools that in no way resembled his perennial hunts for chemicals. After a week, the machine was coming along nicely, and Koschei thought that if only he didn't need to sleep, he and Ushas would be long gone.

Well, that, and Lideen.

"Can't sleep?"

Koschei only had that much warning before Lideen came wandering into Ushas' lab. The woman was far too quiet. He managed to pull a cover over the machine and tinkered with a broken test tube rack instead.

"Not really," he said.

"It's the chemicals," said Lideen. She pulled up a stool from the corner and sat down to watch Koschei fiddle with the essentially irreparable rack.

"Something you've been working with?" Koschei focused on his bracelets, glinting in the light of his dim tablelamp. "You should have warned me.”

"No." Lideen leaned forward, earnest. Her eyes were wide enough that the orbs might come free of their sockets. "No, it's what they've done to your brain chemistry. You can't expect to go through a CIA-aided regeneration and come out entirely yourself."

"You speak from experience?" asked Koschei, lightly.

"Not me. But you feel it, don't you? You're more amiable, not given to questions. Any Time Lord who went renegade wouldn't put up with half of what you take from Ushas and I."

"I do what I have to," said Koschei. He bent over the rack so he couldn't see Lideen at all. When he looked up again, she was gone.

\---

The next day, Koschei was tired and a little shaky, strained from wanting to think about what Lideen had said and the bone-deep incuriosity which had sprung up in this regeneration. Or had been cultivated in this regeneration. It was easier to let himself sink into the routine of helping Lideen and Ushas, finally gathering up the samples and taking them to the entry room, where they would be collected by whatever agent had been assigned to them today.

The Doctor was in the entry room.

Koschei's arms tightened around his box of chemistry projects, but the haze made him strong in an odd way, unshakable, and he managed to walk to the table in the center of the room and set the box down.

"We've broken down and resynthesized the 'retcon' you brought us," he said, voice sounding remarkably calm. "Those are in the taller flasks - they're a clear liquid, so be careful with them. The biological weapons are still in development, but we do have a few strains for you to test-"

"Koschei," said the Doctor, his voice choked. "Do you remember me?"

Koschei paused, his fingers still on the rim of the deadly virus he'd been pointing out.

"Yes, of course," he said.

"Oh, oh, I am sorry." The Doctor tried to smile, not quite disguising his miserable look. "When you just started talking, I was afraid-"

"Well, what was I supposed to say, Doctor?" Koschei let himself really look at the Doctor, taking in the dusting of gray in his black cap of hair and the deepened lines in his face. The slumped shoulders that made the Doctor look shorter than ever. His rewards for CIA service, no doubt. "You've come for me at last? I've been waiting so long?"

"No, I don't know." The Doctor ducked his head and stepped closer. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right - I only just found out that you were still alive."

"Here I am, Doctor, I'm still alive. Now, no doubt you have to hurry away before the CIA finds out that you're here."

"They do know," said the Doctor. He took the box away from Koschei, not bothering to steady the contents. "I, ah, made a special request to pick up the results of this week's work."

Koschei nodded, numbly. He wasn’t sure whether to be thankful for CIA meddling in his brain, or to be furious that his anger with the Doctor had been ripped away with him. But he couldn’t work up thankfulness or furiousness, so it was a bit of a moot point.

"Well. Goodbye, Koschei." The Doctor reached out a hand to touch Koschei's shoulder, and then had to catch at the box as he nearly lost grip with his other hand. He careened out of the room and the door slipped closed behind him.

"Don't call me that," whispered Koschei to the empty room.

There was definitely something wrong with him. As soon as he and Ushas were out of here, he would do scans, make a drug regimen, even forcibly regenerate if he had to.

His hands hurt, and Koschei flexed them out of the white-knuckled fists they'd formed.

"Was that _the Doctor_?" Ushas came out of her lab, stripping off rubber gloves. "Has he been wearing that ridiculous coat the entire time?"

"We're nearly ready," said Koschei, ignoring the question. "Tonight."

"Mm? Good."

Koschei could feel Ushas' eyes on him as he went to help Lideen with her latest project.

\---

The machine was indeed finished that night, or, more accurately, in the space between first and second dawn. Ushas had gone to rest a few spans before, so Koschei was alone as he taped the last few wires and slipped them into place. He screwed the housing back together and stared.

No more CIA imprisonment. No more fetching and carrying for Lideen. Probably some more fetching and carrying for Ushas, but he'd see what he could do to keep that to a minimum.

Koschei stretched, finally looking up from his machine, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness away from the circle of light made by his lamp. Then he yelped as a sharp pain stabbed at his neck.

"Should pay more attention to your surroundings," hummed Lideen, behind him. Koschei started to fall forward, and she caught him, lowering him gently to the table. Koschei blinked, slowly. His brain felt like it was beginning to run out his ears. Lideen set down a syringe on the table, coming around to pick up the machine.

"It was nice of you to help me put this paralytic together. Not that you knew what you were assisting me with. And it was very nice of you to put all this time into your little machine, just so I could escape," Lideen grinned, and patted Koschei on the shoulder, just where the Doctor had touched him before. "Your sacrifice is appreciated."

Koschei nodded, watching the color drain from his vision. He should probably be upset, but, well.

"This button here, is it?" asked Lideen. "Thanks, kid."

"Don't call me kid," mumbled Koschei. He was going to die without having had a proper name this regeneration.

"Sorry, what was that?" Lideen leaned in close, her brown eyes widening, filling up her face in a way that was possibly a hallucination. Koschei could tell from the way the rest of her face was starting to stretch and melt. "Was that important, or are you just refusing to die quietly?"

"Cycled salinic cerul solution," mumbled Koschei.

"What?"

The blue vial crashed over Lideen's head as Ushas let go of it. Lideen screamed as the liquid bubbled, an acidic smell suffusing the room. She let go of the machine and Koschei caught it instinctively, clutching it as Ushas pried Lideen away from him. Drops of the acid spattered on Koschei's face from Lideen's convulsions next to him, but the pain was dull and distant.

"Right," said Ushas, utterly unconcerned. "Hit the button."

It was the last thing Koschei ever did in that body.

\---

When Koschei came to, he was in a TARDIS. He sat up gingerly, his neck aching from where his head had been poorly cushioned by a toolbox. He brushed his suddenly long hair out of his eyes with hands that were, he was displeased to note, significantly coarser than last time. His wrists pinched slightly where his now-too-small bracelets bit into them.

"You're awake?" called Ushas, from around the console.

"More or less." Koschei stood up. The TARDIS was a stripped-down CIA model - adequate, but hardly luxurious. It was also shaking in a fairly unsettling way.

"Good, come help me with the dematerialization. I got us into free space, but we're still being pursued."

Koschei nodded and fell to the controls, coordinating his efforts with Ushas. They came out into the void, then back again, then the void and then out, the sensor indicating the pursuit still winking dully. Koschei growled and pulled a lever down hard, accelerating their transitions through the random coordinates Ushas was keying in.

He could feel his emotions again, a raging heat in his face and his stomach that made his previous paucity of reaction all the more horrifying. It was _good_ to feel horrified. The fear of losing that ability again spurred his hands to move faster, buttons pressed and dials spun in a flurry of evasive maneuvers.

Finally they materialized and the radar registered no pursuit. They held, tense and silent for a moment, and still nothing happened.

"Right," Koschei said. "Right, let's see what's out there, shall we?"

"Scanner says Earth," said Ushas. "Opening the doors."

The air that filtered in was warm and dry. Koschei stepped out into a busy marketplace filled with chattering humans in a mix of colorful robes and drab shirts and trousers.

"This is India," he said, wondering. "The Doctor always-"

"Yes, yes, the Doctor," said Ushas, stepping out as well. They were of a height this time, Koschei noted with disappointment. He'd enjoyed looking down on Ushas.

"Tell me," she continued. "How easy would it be to take this place over?"

"I can't imagine it would be that difficult," Koschei said, considering. "We've arrived relatively early in Earth's development. Perhaps a little under a half-century after the harnessing of nuclear power. There’s been no official contact with off-world sentience, yet, but there are dozens of aliens landing every year. We'll simply need to arrange an alliance with a sufficiently powerful alien and then suborn one of the native power centers - the government, or a religious sect, perhaps." He eyed the passersby, who were more or less ignoring the two raggedy-looking foreigners, and started to make calculations. "We'll need to disguise ourselves as contemporaries, if not compatriots, and infiltrate some group in order to gain information about how things are run around here-"

"I’m not interested in an alliance, and the rest sounds far too complicated," said Ushas. She pulled a vial out of her pouch and swirled the contents around, thoughtfully. "Why don’t we just walk into this alley?”

"Ushas, dark alleyways are hardly the wisest choice of locale for newly arrived foreigners." Koschei sneered at her. "Weren't you paying attention on _any_ of our schooltrips?"

"Come on," said Ushas, rolling her eyes. She wandered into a disgusting-looking alley. Koschei followed, not wanting to stand around in the open alone either. They loitered around, looking vulnerable - not difficult for him, still woozy from regeneration - until a hungry-looking young tough snuck out of the shadows and threatened them with a knife. Koschei fought back instinctively, and Ushas wet her sleeve with the vial, holding the cloth over the tough's nose as Koschei pinned his arms. The tough's eyes went blank and his breathing turned shallow.

"What did you do to him?" Koschei passed his hands in front of the tough's face, evoking no reaction.

"Weren’t you paying attention to _any_ of my CIA projects?" said Ushas, mocking. "He'll take our orders now. Won't you?"

"I obey," said the tough.

"And he'll tell us exactly what we want to know," said Ushas. "So we can conquer this area without having to bother with any of your sociology-student nonsense."

Koschei glared at Ushas as she questioned the tough. He only felt somewhat mollified when she had to look to Koschei to understand what a 'parliament' was and what it had to do with them.

\---

Mumbai in 1985 wasn't the safest or the wealthiest place on Earth, but it did afford a number of opportunities to a pair of scientifically-minded foreigners. Ushas was quickly hired by a pharmaceuticals company, and seemed well on the way to acquiring her own lab and her own funding. Koschei left her to it.

He himself got part time employment as a translator for businessmen. It was easy work, given the immediate fluency afforded by the TARDIS' translation field, and left him plenty of time to improve the TARDIS and study his surroundings.

He dressed to fade into the mass of people, rather than to stand out, as he would if he had any authority. He wore trousers and collared shirts, and let his beard grow, though not into the stylized spikes he had once preferred. He was a little too pale to be really unnoticeable in this time and place, but his hair was brown and his eyes were brown, and his features were dull and unremarkable. The brass bracelets didn’t look _too_ out of place, and Koschei couldn’t get them off without some trouble, so he let them tarnish and forgot about them.

Armed with time and anonymity, Koschei set out to soak up the culture. He followed crowds, trusting them to lead him to what was popular and informative. It was perhaps inevitable that they would lead him to the cinema. If he recalled correctly, Mumbai was the seat of the local film industry, though he didn’t know anything beyond that.

Koschei glanced up at the marquee and picked a name at random, handing his money to the woman selling tickets.

"Good choice," she said, grinning. "That's very popular. Begins in five minutes, have a nice time!"

Koschei nodded and went to go wait.

First there was darkness. Then there was a flickering light, and then color. Koschei paused for a moment to marvel at the novelty of two-dimensional moving pictures, and then he was absorbed.

He was spat out three hours later in a crowd of fellow viewers. He was grinning, vaguely.

"Good show?" The ticket-woman was standing outside when Koschei came out, her hands cupping a surreptitious cigarette.

"It was- there was so _much_ ," said Koschei, unable to really explain. "The music-"

"I hear there's a scene where you can see Mandakini's breasts," said the woman. "How do you think they got that past the censors?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Koschei. "I didn't really understand that part of the plot."

"Well, plot." The woman laughed. "I don't know if nudity has to be part of the plot. But it is based on one of Kalidasa's works, isn't it?"

"Mm," said Koschei, the default noise of someone who doesn't want to admit to his own ignorance. The woman snuffed her cigarette and tucked the stub behind her ear, waving as she went back to work.

Koschei resolved to be better informed, next time.

\---

Ushas started calling herself the Rani, in an astounding feat of hubris.

"You haven't even got any power," pointed out Koschei. "You've only just gotten a source of funding."

"With this grant, it's only a matter of time," said the Rani, complacently. "Especially since the number of my controlled Humans is always increasing."

"The drugs you're giving them can't be healthy," said Koschei. "How many have you lost this week?"

"Fewer than I've gained," snapped the Rani. “It’s not my fault that I have to use inferior components. If only I still had my lab back home, not just an empty TARDIS and the meager resources of _Bombay_ , I could-" She stopped, and visibly calmed herself.

“Well, we can never go home again now,” pointed out Koschei in the space that followed.

“I know that, of course I know that,” said the Rani, and Koschei interrupted rather than listen to her rationalizations.

“And it’s Mumbai, not Bombay.”

“A detail,” said the Rani, waving a hand. She turned back to the experiment she was conducting on the kitchen table. “All of my co-workers say Bombay.”

“That’s because you’re working with non-residents,” explained Koschei. “It’s actually a relic of a foreign occupation – the city is officially termed Bombay, but the locals all call it Mumbai-“

“It is actually impossible for me to care less,” said the Rani. “What were we talking about, before you derailed us into minutiae?”

“Your name,” said Koschei, scowling. It had taken ages to track down the distinction between Mumbai and Bombay. “Your absurd, arrogant name.”

"At least I have a new name. Did you ever decide what to call yourself?"

"Kalid," he said, immediately. "That's how I've been introducing myself, now."

"That's not one of your tedious native writers, is it?" The Rani made a face. "Pass me that test tube, will you?"

"Here," said Kalid, dodging the question.

The Rani needn't know that he'd been staying up late at night, reading of the troubled love of Shakuntala and Dushyanta. It was instructive to compare the literary traditions of different cultures and planets, and the sad yet hopeful story by Kalidasa was far more vibrant than the dull, legalistic affairs that Kalid remembered from his childhood. The level of emotion in Kalidasa’s prose spoke to Kalid, telling him something about Mumbai, and India, and the Human race.

He wasn’t sure what the Rani would find more pathetic – that he’d been reading classic theater, or that he’d been analyzing the plays in a cultural context. Probably, Kalid thought, the idea of appropriating another man’s passion for his own would make the Rani laugh outright. She’d make snide remarks about ‘learning to feel again.’

"Kalid," said the Rani. "Hm."

Kalid narrowed his eyes at her and decided he didn’t care what she thought.

\---

Kalid took to going to the cinema every week, seeing a film, and then spending much of the rest of the week researching every part he didn't understand. He soon gained a working knowledge of the criminal culture, of politics, of the caste system, of the various religions. Working knowledge wasn't the same as an understanding, but it was better than anything the Rani had.

"How was your week?" Shree, the ticket lady, was having another cigarette outside.

"Rather tiring," said Kalid. "And yours?"

"Busy," she blew out smoke. "Your girlfriend still giving you trouble?"

Kalid had had to explain the Rani away as his significant other in order to keep complaining about her.

"She's researching how to make people more... suggestible by altering their brain chemistry," said Kalid, the need for discretion overwhelmed by the need to vent. "It’s probably only a matter of time before she tries to experiment on me."

"Chemical hypnosis, huh?" Shree made a face. "I thought the normal kind was bad enough. I just saw some British film about mind games – bizarre stuff."

"Well, the Rani's hardly equipped to hypnotize someone _without_ chemicals," said Kalid, making a face to match Shree's. He dropped it as she laughed.

"Pet names, huh? Pretty cute. My boyfriend makes up the worst pet names-"

The rest of Shree's story was lost on Kalid as he shuddered in disgust at the thought of giving the Rani a pet name.

\---

After a few months, the Rani and Kalid were firmly ensconced as well-off residents of Mumbai. Kalid even had hopes of actually subverting the government through finesse, rather than by just drip-feeding the Prime Minister the Rani's control chemical. Those hopes ended when the CIA finally tracked them down.

"This is your fault," shouted Kalid as he and the Rani dodged staser bolts, the normal crowds scattering as they ran down the street to where their TARDIS was still standing where it had landed. "I told you we had to be more inconspicuous!"

" _You're_ the one who told me about their fish-people gods! I was simply trying to recreate-"

"Matsya is an _avatar_ of Vishnu, and-"

"It hardly matters now." The Rani ducked into an alley, pulling Kalid behind her. "Here, shortcut."

"Your ignorance is incredibly offensive in someone attempting to be a ruler," hissed Kalid, as they stumbled through the narrow corridor. "Leaving aside the fact that you’ve probably heightened religious tensions – tensions which I’m sure you’re completely unaware of – even if you had succeeded, what would have been the point?"

"Well, the primitives would have bowed down to their god, and, by extension, me." The TARDIS was only a few feet away from the other side of the alley, but the CIA agents were nearing it, still periodically firing staser bolts into the air to no apparent purpose.

"The number of misconceptions in that sentence is absurd," said Kalid.

"I think we should make a break for the TARDIS," said the Rani. "We can get there before they hit us, can't we?"

"Just wait for the local authorities," said Kalid. "We'll get out under the cover."

"Your local authorities may never come." The Rani fingered her pouch. "Your single-mindedness is occasionally useful, but I'm afraid that right now we need a backup plan."

"Renegades, give yourselves up," shouted one of the agents. "Under the authority of  
Coordinator Azmael, I am willing to be merciful to either of you, if you only surrender."

Kalid was tempted. The CIA would surely be able to tell that he had little part in this disaster. In fact, he'd been kidnapped while regenerating in the first place, hadn't he?

He might even be able to serve an exile here, in Mumbai. Bollywood movies and chats with Shree were infinitely preferable to another prison sentence with the Rani, or worse.

Kalid caught the Rani's eye, but she was too far away to stop him. He began to edge out of the alley.

Which was when the fish-monster rounded the bend.

"Agh!" screamed the CIA agent, crushed under its glistening scales.

"Right, let's get out of here, before they send reinforcements," said the Rani.

"Also, Matsya is not six meters long with a thirst for blood," said Kalid, staring blankly as the CIA agent's partner tried to help her fallen comrade.

"Yes, yes, but you have to admit the self-moisturizing field was an astounding technical achievement," said the Rani. "Now, let's _get out of here_.

They made it to the TARDIS just as the police finally arrived. The police seemed unable to do much but gibber as Kalid and the Rani snuck into their ship.

"Possibly I placed too much faith in the authorities," said Kalid, setting the TARDIS into flight.

"Possibly," agreed the Rani, injecting something into his neck.

\---

When Kalid came to this time, he was still in the same body. A small mercy, given that he was also strapped down to a medical bed.

"Where did you even get this?" He tugged at the restraints on his arms and found them quite immovable.

"I had it made," said the Rani, somewhere behind him. Kalid couldn't manage to turn his head enough to find her. "It's for restraining live subjects."

"I have no intention of being your _subject_ , live or not," said Kalid. He should have known. It had only been a matter of time before the Rani lost interest in him as a person and decided he'd be more entertaining as an experiment.

"Oh, I have no intention of making you a subject, either. Yet. You're useful to me, Kal." The Rani's tongue slid around the unasked for endearment and Kalid flinched. "You're useful to me as you are - a brilliant, plodding engineer and sociologist. But it's your disloyal tendencies which have me worried."

Ah. The CIA.

"I wasn't going to-" Kalid began, and then stopped, realizing that would be a bit too much to believe. He tried again. "I don't know what you saw-"

"Kal, no one's _blaming_ you. I might be tempted myself, if I weren't in a more difficult position. That's why I need to make it impossible for the CIA to use you against me."

Terrifying visions of lobotomization and zombification flitted through Kalid's mind. Some of it must have shown on his face, because the Rani clicked her tongue.

"No, not that. Actually, I'm asking you to marry me."

Kalid's mind actually shut down this time. Perhaps that was her plan.

"What?"

"It's illegal to try and get a bondpartner to testify against his or her spouse," explained the Rani. "An archaic law, but one that is scrupulously followed by the CIA, given a few past incidents."

"I don't want to marry _you_ ," said Kalid.

The Rani came into view at last, scowling and holding a thin piece of metal between two fingers.

"Regrettable. Well, plan B is that I drill your head open and implant this control strip." The Rani rummaged in a toolbox and produced a tiny drill. "You'll experience some loss of creativity, but you didn't have much in the first place, so-"

"You're bluffing," said Kalid, uncertainly.

"As you say," replied the Rani. She turned the drill on and brought it to bear just above Kalid's right ear.

"Wait, yes, whatever you say, please turn off the drill," babbled Kalid. The whirring of the drill drowned out his voice in his own head, but the Rani brought it away, so apparently he'd been understandable.

"You accept my proposal?" asked the Rani.

"I'm bleeding, you mad bitch," said Kalid, which was a yes.

\---

The ceremony was in a small townhall on a backwater planet. They'd picked it out together, though with more of an eye toward its diplomatic status with Gallifrey than anything else. The important thing was that the marriage would be legal back home. They used their real names and everything, though Kalid grimaced as he gave the clerk yet another name that he no longer recognized as his own. The Rani seemed to have no such qualms.

"Do you take this man to be your lawfully held mating partner," read the official off of a piece of paper, "to bear your clutch of eggs and provide sustenance from his own flesh in times of need?"

"Yes," said the Rani. Kalid felt a bit queasy. He suspected the Rani of having done more research without him – this planet had been her suggestion, come to think of it.

  
"And do you take this woman to be your lawfully held mating partner, to carry you on the pilgrimage to the holy city and bury you there if need be?"

"Yes," said Kalid.

"You may rub feelers," said the official, and then clicked, confused. "Or mouths, I suppose. Is that what you do?"

"No," said Kalid.

"No," said the Rani.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Perhaps we could shake hands," said Kalid.

They did.

\---

"I wouldn't expect anything... intimate," said the Rani, later that night. They were having dinner on the TARDIS, both of them being unwilling to risk the local food after all that talk of eating the mate's body.

"Believe me, my dear, you're hardly my type," said Kalid. He had thought about it, of course, especially after the kissing suggestion. But the thought actually made him tense and shaky with what he was sure was palpable dread.

"We'll try for a new planet tomorrow, shall we?" he said, changing the subject. The Rani nodded and that seemed to be an end to the discussion.

\---

The new planet was desert and empty sand. Kalid stared around the pit of dunes they had landed in and went back in to the TARDIS.

"It's hot out there," he said to the Rani.

"I don't really care," she said. She poured a chemical into a beaker, stared at it for a moment, and then drank it.

"There’s not anything for you to experiment on," said Kalid. He wanted to move on, to leave.

"I'm working on myself, at the moment," said the Rani. "Go amuse yourself, why don't you?"

Kalid made a face at her back, and went off into one of the storage rooms to find some robes that would shield him from the sun. He went outside and sat down in the shade of the TARDIS, thinking.

It was hotter on this planet than it had ever been on Gallifrey, hotter than in Mumbai. But the shade did something, and Kalid needed time away from the Rani and her experiments. Her reliance on chemicals to make even her own body bend to her whim.

Kalid's own experience with the War Games had shown him that mechanistically inducing altered minds was apt to fail. How different was the Rani's method of control from that of the War Lord's scientists, in kind if not in detail? But she wouldn’t listen to him when he suggested different methods.

There were easier ways to do things. He'd learned in school about the power of the Time Lord to control other minds - they'd never done much with it, but the Doctor, at least, had gained enough knowledge to be able to make others somewhat suggestible with the aid of a prop. Koschei had never really been interested.

Kalid might be. He thought back, trying to recall what he had been taught and shown.

There was some life on the planet. Primitive, and not wholly sentient, but alive. Kalid saw the burrows and the tracks, and, as time wore on and the sun sank, the aliens themselves began to wander out. They were small creatures, somewhat like the Earth's rabbit, but with fine, iridescent scales rather than fur. They crawled close to Kalid as he sat still, perhaps lulled into thinking he was another strange immobile object like the TARDIS.

Kalid waited until the bravest of the aliens was nearly touching him and then reached out a hand to catch at it. It struggled, powerful legs kicking at his arm, claws rasping on his bracelet as the other aliens scattered for their burrows. Kalid ignored the movement and held the alien’s eyes with his own gaze. The alien stilled, not stiff, just not reacting, and let him pick it up fully in both hands. Its scales were smooth and cool to Kalid’s touch. But his control was fleeting, and soon it was squeaking and scrabbling at him again, the hypnotic control gone. Kalid sighed and let the alien go.

It suddenly struck him that he was tired and hungry and cold. The dark had crept up on him as he’d thought, and the lingering heat of the sand was almost gone. Kalid stood up, stiffly, and pushed the TARDIS door back open. He went in, stripping off his overrobe and depositing it on the chair set next to the door for that purpose.

"Kal!" The Rani's voice called from within the TARDIS at the sound of the door closing again.

"What?"

"Don't go anywhere," shouted the Rani.

Kalid immediately wanted to bolt for it, but that would probably be unwise. Perhaps more unwise than staying.

When the Rani appeared, she was flushed and sweating, strange for Gallifreyans in general, stranger still for her.

"I need to have sex with you," said the Rani.

"So you can communicate whatever disease it is you've given yourself?" asked Kalid, in alarm. "No."

"It's just a hormone imbalance," said the Rani. "I'll fix it momentarily, once I've regained my concentration." She swayed closer, her face screwed up and tense.

"What? What were you doing?" Kalid backed away until his back hit the closed doors.

"I was trying to raise my energy." The Rani was now plastered up against Kalid in a very un-Rani-like way. He tried to peel her off, but couldn't quite manage it.

"And you raised, what, your libido?"

"It worked on human subjects, but our biochemistry must be more different than I had thought." The Rani plucked at Kalid's shirt. "I require a shared orgasm before I can get back to work. Just to take the edge off."

"I'm really not interested," said Kalid, "in having sex with a deranged biologist who is apt to break me down for parts once we're done. You're the proverbial black widow."

The Rani narrowed her eyes at him.

"I think I have an oversized black coat and a strap-on in the auxiliary lab."

"I don't know what you're insinuating," said Kalid, quickly. "But I don't-"

"I may even have your old cuffs as well," said the Rani.

What Kalid should have done is ask _why_ she had those things. What he should have done was offer to find her a prostitute as soon as possible. He did not, he reminded himself, like the Rani.

Her hips jerked against him demandingly, and Kalid decided he didn’t have to like her.

"I'm going to have my eyes closed the whole time," he warned.

"Visual contact isn't necessary for physical stimulation. If you like,” the Rani said, as if conferring a great favor, “I'll do you face down."

If he was going to be living with a deranged biologist who dismissed his plans and used him only for his technical expertise, he might as well get something out of it.

\---

It took the Rani five more hormone imbalances before she finally had her biological chemistry ticking along as she wanted. She offered to work out a regimen for Kalid as well, but he demurred. It wasn't that he hadn't, well, _enjoyed_ his encounters with the Rani. Even his reacquaintance with the medical bed had been less disturbing than he had anticipated, and the Rani could actually be very imaginative about the use of straps.

But Kalid was tired, and sore, and the thought of altering his body chemistry to suit the Rani's plans was frankly terrifying.

The Rani let it go and they jumped from planet to planet. They had no clear idea of where they were going - Kalid's control of the TARDIS was impeccable, but it wasn't as if they actually knew much about the coordinates of the universe outside of Gallifrey. And Gallifrey was the last place on which they wanted to arrive.

On each planet with life, Kalid practiced his hypnotism. He got an Ice Warrior to ignore his presence, convinced a Peladonian to share her meal, and nearly got knocked out by an aptly named Refusian. Not one of his finer moments, and, in retrospect, hypnotizing an invisible alien was probably a step beyond him at the moment. But the art was coming along.

Finally they fetched up on a tertiary planet of the Monan cluster.

"The technology will be amazing," said the Rani. "I can finally get on with some of the experiments that I've had to put off because of lack of equipment."

"I thought our plan was to find a small planet and be inconspicuous," said Kalid. "Not invade a major temporal power."

"We can be inconspicuous," said the Rani.

"They're _blue_ ," said Kalid. “We’re not even on the spectrum of possible Monan coloration, never mind the body shape.”

“You worry too much,” said the Rani, and ignored Kalid when he seethed.

Kalid’s annoyance was made worse by the fact that the Rani was, by and large, right. She was able to proceed just as she had in Mumbai - this planet was undergoing rapid economic expansion, drawing in immigration and rendering a pair of off-worlders more or less unremarkable. The Rani found a laboratory that would hire her as a contractor, leaving Kalid to skulk around and practice his hypnotism. The Monans were a strong-willed people, and a challenge, but he thought he was getting the hang of it. He had to, after his first few attempts ended up with him being held by the authorities for being 'generally creepy.'

"I was just sitting across from him on the transit system," he tried to explain to the officer during one of these predicaments.

"Staring at him," said the officer, unimpressed. "We don't approve of foreign males coming here, picking fights with our men." She narrowed her eyes. "Or stealing them off."

"Madam, I intended nothing of the kind."

"Where's your residency permit, that's what I'd like to know," said the officer. She tapped a few queries into her datapad. "Ship docking information, even?"

"Ah." Kalid caught the officer's eyes with his. "You do not need to see my information."

"I-" The officer hesitated. "What?"

"Obviously this was a misunderstanding," said Kalid, smoothly. It was easier when you provided a rationale for what you were doing. "In any case, the man in question is now safe from my so-called intentions. Better to release me and spare yourself the paperwork."

"There is a lot of paperwork," agreed the officer, hazily. She shook herself. "All right, get out of here. Can't have you wasting my time."

Kalid smiled and walked out. If he ever managed to rule a place, offenders would surely not be dismissed simply for lack of willingness to deal with the forms of getting them into the system. But, for now, it was very convenient to have an easy handhold into the minds of the enforcers of the law.

\---

"Where have you been?" demanded the Rani, when Kalid was finally back at the TARDIS.

"In jail," he replied. "Momentarily."

"What? And you thought to lecture me about conspicuousness-"

"What's got you in such a foul mood?" Kalid was getting better at reading the Rani, not that it was hard to tell when she was angry. He could tell when she wasn’t angry with him, that was the point.

"Surprise inspection," said the Rani. She ran her fingers through her hair, frowning. "They're wondering where a few components have gotten to. A few staff members."

"And, naturally, they've gotten to your lab."

"Naturally. I've got to step up pace on the work," mumbled the Rani.

"Mind you don't cause another India incident," cautioned Kalid.

\---

There was another India incident. The ensuing giant monster rampaged for an hour before the CIA agents arrived and cut the Rani and Kalid off from escape.

“I am _incredibly_ frustrated with the way you don’t listen to anything I say,” said Kalid, right before they gave themselves up rather than be shot.

"Remember," growled the Rani, as they were dragged off, "they can't make us say anything. Our testimony's off limits."

"I wouldn't have to give testimony if you weren't fundamentally incapable of not creating ravening beasts," said Kalid, but the Rani was out of hearing range and the retort was rather lost on the CIA agent pinning Kalid's arms.

\---

Kalid was left in a cell for a few long spans. He spent most of the time cursing the Rani's idiotic fixation on giant animals and his own inability to strike out on his own. After a while the anger and frustration wore him out and he just sat, looking unseeing at the opposite wall. It was uncomfortably like the last time he had been in CIA custody, and Kalid swore to himself not to regenerate while he was here. He couldn't let them make him docile again, even if docile wasn't the same as obedient.

"Conducting your experiments on a temporal power's world may not have been exactly _wise_ ," said a voice, the door opening. Kalid looked up to stare at a thin-faced Time Lord he vaguely recognized. The Doctor's older brother, leagues ahead of them at school. They'd met perhaps five times, spoken fewer than a dozen words to each other. He had a pad of paper and an amiable expression.

"I am Ambassador Braxiatel," said the man, smiling. "I've been advised that you no longer respond to the name by which I used to hear you referred to."

"It's Kalid, now," said Kalid. He didn’t smile back. "What can I do for the Ambassador?"

"Well now." Braxiatel pulled up a chair and sat down, fussing with his robes. "What I'd _like_ is for you to give me a complete account of your movements since your escape with," Braxiatel hesitated and glanced down at his pad, "the Rani. A lot of aliases involved in the renegade business, aren't there? Well, I suppose you didn't start the trend. Anyway, we need to go back in and repair the time lines that you two have undoubtedly disrupted."

"We didn't do anything," said Kalid, before he could stop himself.

"I'm sure you thought so," said Braxiatel, soothingly. "But there's a reason why unlicensed time travel is proscribed - so _easy_ to slip up and, oh, experiment on someone who was supposed to be important."

"I won't tell you anything," said Kalid. "I'd be mad to give you evidence for my own prosecution and you're not supposed to ask me to incriminate my," he gritted his teeth, "spouse."

"Technically I cannot ask you to betray your bond-partner to the authorities," agreed Braxiatel. "But, if I may, I will step out of my position as ambassador and into my position as the elder brother of your," Braxiatel paused, "shall we say, best friend?"

Kalid waited for the punch line.

"Kalid, the papers for a divorce would be simplicity itself to file, especially as the two of you were married in a non-Gallifreyan ceremony. And afterward, if you were willing to give the Rani to us, I believe I could extract a pardon for you on the grounds that you were working under duress."

"I-" The Rani would kill him. Somehow.

"I have the papers here." Braxiatel unfolded a thin sheaf of documents from between two pages of his pad.

"Where do I sign?" asked Kalid. The Rani wasn't here, after all. What could she do?

\---

It turned out that the Rani could do quite a lot. She had treated Kalid with some kind of immensely sophisticated drug - presumably she had put it in his food since Kalid had refused all offers of her mind-altering chemicals. No sooner had Kalid confessed everything to Braxiatel then he was choking, his throat seizing up as Braxiatel called for help. The next few hours passed in a haze, his regeneration taking a now-familiar toll on his new body. When Kalid came back to himself, he was in a bed, in a comfortable room rather than in a cell.

And he had meant not to regenerate while he was here. He could only hope that they hadn't had time to manipulate the change. He felt angry at the Rani and his situation, which was probably a good sign.

"Hello?" he croaked.

"You're awake." A Gallifreyan guard came over to look at him. "Hn. I'm to tell you that you're in custody of Lord Gilviger of the High Council, awaiting your trial."

"Trial?" Kalid's brain whirred. "I made a deal with Ambassador Braxiatel-"

"I'm not aware of any deal," said the guard. "In any case, Brax hardly has any authority to make a deal with a renegade, especially one who escaped from his last criminal sentence."

Kalid groaned and closed his eyes. Betrayed. He heard the guard walk away, humming tunelessly.

Kalid tried to sit up and managed it, wobbling. He clutched at the stand beside the bed to support himself, and his fingers bounced off something.

The key to his TARDIS.

Kalid stared. He wasn't wearing the clothes he'd been captured in, not anymore. They'd been replaced with the damned CIA prisoner's uniform again. Even his bracelets had been taken, slipped off of thinner wrists. Kalid looked around to check if any of his other possessions were there, but no. Just the key.

Someone wanted him to make a break for it.

It could be a trap, but after dying once and now heading to CIA confinement yet again, Kalid could hardly think of how things could get worse.

"Guard," he said, faintly. "Guard?"

"Yes, what is it now?"

"I think I'm having a bad reaction to my regeneration- ah! My vision's going black-"

"Oh, Rassilon," groaned the guard, and hurried over. He reached out a hand to Kalid and was grabbed, Kalid lunging forward to grasp the contact points at his temple.

"Calm yourself," he said, soothingly, as the guard struggled. "You are under my control. I am Kalid, your master-" no, that sounded wrong, he needed to be more sure of himself- "I am _the_ Master, and you will obey me." The guard hesitated, eyes rolling back, and the Master pressed his advantage. "You _will_ obey me."

A Gallifreyan mind was more difficult than anything he'd ever faced, but the power of his regeneration was coursing through his veins, radiating from his fingertips. The Master laughed, enjoying the rolling sound of it, and the guard stiffened and stopped fighting.

"Good," said the Master. "Now. You will escort me to the TARDIS that I was captured with. It is here?"

"Yes," said the guard, dully. "It is in the docking bay."

"You suspect that there is something dangerous hidden in there. You wish for me to show it to you, so you can destroy it."

"Yes," said the guard.

"Good. Let us go." The Master let go of the guard gingerly, worried that the hypnosis wouldn't hold. There was no outburst, however, and the Master wobbled out of the bed, supported by the guard under the guise of making sure he would be unable to escape.

The corridors and the docking bay were eerily deserted, raising the Master's suspicions. Whoever was easing his way certainly had the authority to make it very easy indeed. The TARDIS door swung open as smoothly as ever, and the Master briefly checked for traps before shutting the guard outside.

No one had even modified the TARDIS to keep it from dematerializing. Instead, the TARDIS was pristine, the Rani's chemicals and experiments intact. There was a set of coordinates already fit into the console. Earth, he could see that much. Part of his hidden ally's agenda, no doubt, but the Master hardly had time to figure out a different destination. A random choice might turn out to be just as bad as this preprogrammed one.

He set the TARDIS off, her hum around him pulling another deep laugh from his throat.

\---

"Braxiatel! Ambassador Braxiatel!" Lord Gilviger rounded the corner as fast as his elderly body could take him, just catching a glimpse of the TARDIS as it disappeared.

"Oh dear, your prisoner has escaped," murmured Braxiatel, coming out of the shadows.

"While you stood by," snapped Gilviger. He walked up to the hypnotized guard and grabbed his chin, staring into his eyes in an effort to awaken him.

"You are mistaken," said Braxiatel, complacently. "I was occupied, until recently, with other matters. I arrived only moments before you did."

"I will have _words_ with you, you upstart-"

"The Master," groaned the guard. Gilviger released his chin.

"There, there, son," he said, patting the guard on the shoulder. "It's all right."

"His eyes, I- the Master..."

"Is that what he's calling himself, now?" Braxiatel shook his head. "Well, I think this, shall we say, _security failure_ calls for an investigation at the highest level, don't you?"

"Ambassador Braxiatel," hissed Gilviger.

"I'm afraid I shall be busy warning possible targets of the Master's of his escape," said Braxiatel. "Though I doubt I shall be needed, given that my involvement in this case ended some time ago."

"How do you know where he's going?" Gilviger looked even more suspicious than before.

"Oh, I may have let the location of the Doctor slip during our interview. I hardly thought it important at the time, but, now..." Braxiatel hesitated. "You are aware, of course, in the part that the Doctor played in last bringing the Master into custody."

"I'm aware that you had something to do with the Master's escape from custody," said Gilviger, venomously.

"A harsh accusation. I should like to hear it repeated before the Council," said Braxiatel. "If the Council will still listen to you."

" _Why_ would you do this?" asked Gilviger, sticking out his chin. "You're not a criminal or a renegade yourself, or a man who would blithely give aid to one."

"Hypothetically," said Braxiatel. He glanced at the guard and drew close to Gilviger, a smile playing on his lips. "There are those who are somewhat unsatisfied with your work for the Council, aren't there, my lord? I've mentioned to you that your current inquiry into unsanctioned uses of time travel technology is completely unwarranted."

"You're connected to that as well, are you?" Gilviger drew himself up, out of his habitual slouch. "I'll get you for this, you jumped-up-"

"I'm sure," said Braxiatel, and strode away.

\---

The Master stood in front of his mirror, enjoying look of the charcoal Nehru suit he had recovered from the wardrobe, a retro relic of his last stint on Earth. The time he had landed in was only a little earlier than 1985, just enough so that the suit might be fashionable again. It fit well - what had been loose on his last body slightly more fitted on this one.

The Master had a high forehead, an olive complexion, and a passable beard. Acceptable. He also had no Rani, which was the bonus to end all bonuses.

Or, at least, he hoped he had no Rani. Whoever had allowed him to escape may have also-

The Master hurried to the controls. It was the work of a moment to set the TARDIS scanning for other Time Lord presences, a useful relic of its time as a CIA craft. The search turned up another biosignature, and the Master laughed weakly as he realized that it only made sense. Of course. The coordinates had already been input because his abettor had wished to arrange a meet-up with his ex-other half.

She'd kill him. Again.

As an afterthought, the Master hit the button that displayed the full signature of the Time Lord in question.

The Rani had regenerated as a man. Or, no. Hm.

The Master smirked, sudden and glad. It was his other nemesis. The Doctor might be a nuisance, but he was immeasurably less dangerous than the Rani.

Time to make a plan. He'd do things right, this time, with careful research, powerful allies, and absolutely no monsters getting out of control.

The Master rubbed his hands together and started the scanners on a search for nearby alien life.

\---

Braxiatel had hoped the Doctor would be gratified that Braxiatel had taken the time to warn him about the Master. Instead he was just being confused, and, in consequence, insulting.

"The Master?" The Doctor tugged on a white curl, considering. "No, don't know anyone of that name. You've spent too much time working for the Council, Brax, it's rotting your brain."

"You may know him by another name," said Braxiatel. "Kalid?"

"No."

"Koschei, then. The War Chief."

"Why didn't you _say so_ ," said the Doctor. He looked up at the sky with exasperation. "You can hardly expect me to keep track of all those names."

"No, I suppose not," said Braxiatel, dryly. "He's coming here, under whichever name he chooses. I have the utmost faith in your ability to contain him."

"Oh, you do, do you?" The Doctor made a face, still staring stubbornly up at the sky. "Last I heard, he was off with Ushas, and now you tell me that he is here, alone, obviously dangerous, and ready to threaten Earth. And you have faith in my ability to contain him."

"Distract him, anyway," admitted Braxiatel. "Now, my presence is needed elsewhere." He began to recede back into the vortex, headed to the Council's emergency session. Even if his testimony wasn’t needed to push along Gilviger’s fall, he did want to be there to watch.

"Now you listen here," called the Doctor, after him, "I can see what you're doing! And let me say that I don't appreciate it!"

Braxiatel was gone, and the Doctor turned to consider the door that the Master had left booby-trapped after breaking into the research tower. He needed to get in there somehow, and he was wasting precious time in thought - it had been a long time since he had faced a rival of his own caliber, a very long time indeed.

"No," muttered the Doctor, to himself. "I don't appreciate it at all."


End file.
